South Africa and Mozambique plan to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Samora Machel with a solemn ceremony this week at the site of the plane crash that killed the Mozambiquan leader.
South African President Thabo Mbeki and Mozambiquan President Armando Guebuza will pay tribute to Machel at a memorial on an isolated hillside outside Mbuzini, a South African hamlet near its borders with Mozambique and Swaziland.
Machel’s widow, Graca, now married to former South African president Nelson Mandela, and Machel’s children are expected to attend the event, which will include the dedication of a monument honouring the guerrilla leader’s life.
Machel, who was 53 when he died, was Mozambique’s first president after the end of Portuguese rule in 1975. He was returning from a summit in Zambia when his presidential plane crashed on October 19 1986.
Thirty-four others, including a number of senior presidential advisers, also died.
Although a South African inquiry later ruled that an error by the Russian crew caused the crash, there is circumstantial evidence to suggest the plane was drawn off course by a false navigational beacon, possibly placed by apartheid agents.
In a letter posted on the ruling African National Congress’s (ANC) website last week, Mbeki described Machel as a ”great hero of the people of Mozambique and Africa” and raised the issue of whether the apartheid regime had been responsible for his death.
Mandela also previously questioned the official version of events, reopening the inquiry into the crash after he was sworn in as South Africa’s president in 1994.
Mixed Legacy
The ANC forged close ties with Machel in the 1970s and 1980s, a bond that was tethered by their common experience fighting minority white rule and Machel’s willingness to continue supporting the group after Mozambique’s independence.
Machel allowed ANC activists to use Mozambique as a base to train and plan operations and did the same for the guerrillas fighting to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Despite plaudits from his supporters, Machel, a peasant’s son who infused his Frelimo guerrilla movement with the Marxist teachings of Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung, left a mixed legacy in Mozambique, which remains one of the world’s poorest nations.
His 11-year rule was punctuated by political repression, a devastating civil war with the Renamo rebel group and economic collapse triggered by an exodus of skilled Portuguese workers and foreign investment.
At the same time, Machel pointedly refused to ally Mozambique completely with the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc, preferring to keep trade links open with Portugal and other Western nations.
He was also one of the first African leaders to have dealings with apartheid South Africa, although this was seen largely due to famine and economic independence on its neighbour. — Reuters